“The smell was like how soft feels. I think the reason its so nostalgic is because it is like some kinda now-defunct fabric softener or something. Oh shi-Ray,” Whuh?! “how are you doing? I’ll catch up with you later, Kris.”

Olson sat down across from me as I was slowly enjoying my soup. I jumped a bit when he called my name since I was sincerely and solemnly devoted to this fucking flavour exploration. I seriously have to take a minute to just talk about this soup: I was at Fogo, that little restaurant cafe thing. out on the patio. I was thinking of something sweet to eat, but, I kinda have been only chomping down on sweets lately, y’know? Ice cream three times a day as a snack and an eclaire for breakfast? I had to have something to savour. Sausage, potato, and spinach. Three words I’ve never heard in context to soup. At least in a long time, so I ordered it. They must make it in batches since it came so quickly, and damn was it some thick hearty soup. Fuck, we gotta go to Fogo together on a chilly day. Anyways, Olson, yeah, uhhh hm. Got it.

“Superman give you the day off?” I say as coolly as possible as he eyes around, waving his friend off. He laughs for a bit, giving it the whole five degrees or whatever, slapping his leg. He started pointing at me and saying things such as: this girl over here right?, Man oh man what a kicker, Superman?! fucking roasted. He then stared blankly at me and said “What the fuck do you mean, Superman?”. I laughed a little while slurping up some soup “y’know Jimmy Olson, wait I think it might be spelled differently than your name.” A quick google shows: yeah, O-L-S-E-N. Whatever. “Y’know I don’t read comics, what did you expect?” I scoffed. “Expect? Expect?! I expect a little culture from my friends I haven’t spoken to in person for three years, Olsen. I expect in your pittance of a lifestyle, your perchance stumbled into becoming. at least a resemblance, of a weirdly knowledgeable person about stupid, ficticious garbage so you can be cool and popular like me!” I poked him a couple of times then broke into a fit of laughter as I sat down.

We talked a bit and then he looked at his phone, made some plans for that night at left.

I think he said something about cross-fit and working as a ‘digital-consultant’ for his dad.

Anyways, I discovered and watched an episode of Duckula a couple of hours ago, so it went well.

I. You may have been told you imagined it, the feeling of being watched while completely alone. Perhaps in the back of your head you can see the image from countless TV shows and moves you see flash through your head; red, glowing eyes slowly opening up in front of you or worse glowing, huge white teeth from behind.

II.The shade of darkness acts as a blanket of the unknown, and the glowing, scant seen eyes and/or teeth, the inevitable danger of the unknown, of nature herself. Trying to find this imagery, this visual staple of fear and the unknown was actually more difficult to find examples of than I ever thought!

III. The image always fascinated me, sticking out so prominently and so often. It always followed me, seeing just how easily and effectively it fit into the fears of myself and so many others. For darkness in any place, to stare back, is fear.

IV.The imagery of eyes staring through shadow, thus, is one of the greatest abstractions of human fear in media.

V.I will now delve into why and where this trope evolved from. Finally, I will close with how this fine phenomena is one of the most important cultural artifacts of the past in regards to our current artistic climate.

Body

You may have heard, be it sci-fi or even religiously, of the idea of past lives.

There have been cases of children, with no prior interaction with this imagery, having violent nightmares about monsters with gnashing teeth and glowing eyes. These children have never seen a wolf or a predator and are extremely young. Around 2 to 4 years old.

Scientists have been experimenting with rats to see if phobias inflicted to one generation will be inherited by the next even without any interaction with their predecessors. This research has yielded remarkable results: automatic suspicion and fear reactions to the imagery that was a fear for the previous generation without conditioning.

This leads us with some interesting questions. Do human beings, with our cognizant understanding of our surroundings and very biology have genetic fears? The answer seems to be maybe. Some people exhibit these inherent and primal fear responses to darkness and fears of teeth and monsters while others do not.

Transition:

An ancient and powerful fear of the unseen predator only being able to see the light reflected in its eyes seems like an image that’s good to fear inherently.

We see what we fear and our stomachs grow knotted and our blood cold. For if anger is the heart of the battle, fear is the soul of survival.

: Humanity bends our fears to parody.

Art allows for us to subvert our expectations and channel our emotions. The rationality and realization of our dark fears allows us to express and harness them in a feat of artistic logic, such as how the dangerous may lurk in the dark and have glowing eyes. A character in complete darkness is only their eyes as well.Our awareness of our fear and of our abstraction of the world around us allows us to portray and communicate smaller, larger, and deeper concerns with further symbolic language. The darkness staring at us not only represents the very real threat of a predator, but the existential conflict of death incarnate and existential dread as expressed by Nietzsche’s famous quote “..[W]hen you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you”. Our imagery allows to craft and portray concepts that may get lost through simple language alone. That might need to be seen from some to be felt.

This leads to the concept of the cultural artifact. I feel that the imagery of the concealed threat is one universal to all cultures. An artifact from a time not easily forgotten, a time forced upon some and welcomed by others. A fear in the blood of children and the mind of the old. A great artifact grafted to the soul of the people. One that will persist, and will be reborn, with ourselves.

Transition

Through the maze, I see your etches, I see your fears. The blood as your ink, I know of your serious art.

Conclusion

I hope I properly articulated the origins of the eyes of the dark and its importance as a cultural artifact.

Our genetic memory, visual language, and visceral feeling of fear all add together into a wonderful construct of our primal history and the depth of our portrayals.

And I hope you all remember to always be cautious of the dark for it may be waiting for you…

Since it is a chore to choke out something I would find reasonable for people to read every day. I feel that writing something everyday and Publishing them all Friday would be better for (me to edit) everyone! From now on I will be writing something for everyday of the week and have them edited and posted Fridays. The important bit of discipline: writing everyday for a minimum of 30 minutes, will not be lost. I want to create a reliable routine without causing myself any undue anxiety from updating with rushed works that I shat out for the sake of the blog and not for the sake of practice. Thank you for those following me and watching me learn how to routinely run a blog.

My body feels slow and heavy, I hear a murmuring from my laptop and I assume it is playing what I fell asleep to. You assume a lot of things are normal when you feel strange, as the grasp on the world you can not truly process in a sickly state may be imagined back into your grasp to experience the bland safeness you once had.

I move sluggishly onto my side and reach for the space bar, a horror almost instantaneous and infinite washes over me as I open my eyes and hear nothing. I see a grey glowing and feel my sheets draped over me as if they are soaked in a thick, gelatinous sweat of a comatose pig. I try once again to restart some sound, to rouse my consciousness. My lips are dry, that awareness of my lack of power causes my body to strangle itself in confusion. I reach and the cycle occurs again.

I see gray and dark black eyes as I am aware my subconscious is sticking to a satirical approach to torturing me. The cliche aliens grab me, pulling me upward. I lunge forward attacking and fall once again into awakening.

I see the shelves on my wall I face as my eyes open are replaced with a sketch of charcoal that looks to span further than my wall could ever possibly hold. The lines look perfectly planned but chaotic. I see the simple build of an abstract of a round face with many scars, or perhaps a stripped orb. My guesses are cast off as the picture begins to bulge out a being calling out to me, as the symbols seemed to form the call of a god. A god of dreams, of nightmares. It calls out to me and as I see it my mind breaks as it tells me it will have my fear.

My voice is clenching back a scream of horror as I awake again. I turn and call out for help, for my grandmother to just wake me from this nightmare. I feel the strength to float, coldly, out of my room out to the path to my defunct bathroom. I hear dripping and my home is painted with darkness rather than having it fall onto in in the absence of light. I keep crying whispers of mercy, and then choke. Hard silence puncturing my body as I see my elder. Wordless, shriveled in dark water, staring with void in being ethereal. I feel my eyes watering looking at her. I close them.

I hear a scurrying as I reach for the laptop. I could have pressed the button but I see a grayish-white ferret looking creature trespassing my domain. I do not feel power, fear, or sense as I lunge to it and grab it by the neck and back. I do not feel pain as it scratches and bites at my flesh. I begin to try to rip it apart with my hands and teeth as rage courses through me. I succumb to the madness of this world and feel a humble, savage devotion to it. I feel weakness mix my rage, that the pattern was a format. I rip its neck and wake up clenching a pillow.

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, A misogynistic syphilitic mad philosopher broke down the cultural views of his time and de-constructing morality in comparison with reality. For what do we follow but mantras set by ourselves of self-doubt or self-aggrandizing, for what self-actualization achieves it unravels in most. What we look for in the world simplifies itself in the desperation of fulfillment. We grasp at what seems feasible, we deny structures and pain and hatred or we use them to fuel a maniac climb to the top of the shit stack. We devalue, oversaturate, and cycle through, for what do humans do? Plasticity works in many ways, it seems to be the word of the day for this round of 366 days, shaping, breaking, and taking its lay of your environment. Kipper up, simmer down, power through, or stay down and catch your breath. Is life a battle? Is it a test? Life is mostly emptiness, breaths of nothingness into subway windows, feelings of plastic, glass, metal and cats as time passes and you eat, drink, sleep, shit, and once in awhile communicate. For which to rate what you do and how you see, really it is quite dear to me. A bitter man I may be, but for the shit I eat, the grin suits me. I love you all, I must admit, but to take it out and polish it off, when is time for blast off? Where are we going on ‘spaceship earth’ as we soar into an 3-billion year plunge and are flung right back, seems a bit tight and we take a bit of flak. To get a bit abstract with this, I must recollect an absurd feeling of bliss from the comparison of nebulas to neurons as silly as it seems. We seem to be self-aware atoms forming mystic meat machines.

So don’t try to win; but to sharpen, don’t worry about the sin; but the sufferin, and the buffering of ideals and the squeaky wheels of overpriced shiny automobiles. Get real, take a feel, and steal an empty moment back. Track the tacks of pain to the source, while humming a soulful refrain, and remain in mind;open to the rain,wind,and sleet blowing through you, clear the dead leaves from your gutters kids, relax and shift. You can make your own waves, sure, but tsunamis are group efforts. Society is a hivemind. One for the better, it is something forming deeper than simple letters on census’ and land deeds, it is tied in the rings of our hearts as they beat. Do not dehumanize your kin as you see, our thoughts, actions, and voices are key. Answers are built from pacts of mutually beneficial action, research and passion, rational distraction to keep us sane. Bottle your rage into a fermented passion, drink deep with your kin within a small hut, old fashioned. Sticks and bones, forming glass domes. Your evil is forgotten inside your soul. Rest and rise out of your ideology fishbowl.